This work traces the development of the major craft arts, including basketry, pottery and textiles through the millennia of the Southwestern prehistory. Through the author's careful analysis and presentation, the emergence of artistic traditions and their relationships to other aspects of culture.
The concentration of power in the caudillo (leader) is as much a formative element of Mexican culture and politics as the historical legacy of the Aztec emperors, Cortez, the Spanish Crown, the Mother Church and the mixing of the Spanish and Indian population into a mestizo culture. Krauze shows how history becomes biography during the century of caudillos from the insurgent priests in 1810 to Porfirio and the Revolution in 1910. The Revolutionary era, ending in 1940, was dominated by the lives of seven presidents -- Madero, Zapata, Villa, Carranza, Obregon, Calles and Cardenas. Since 1940, the dominant power of the presidency has continued through years of boom and bust and crisis. A major question for the modern state, with today's president Zedillo, is whether that power can be decentralized, to end the cycles of history as biographies of power.
Leaders of the Mexican American Generation explores the lives of a wide range of influential members of the US Mexican American community between 1920 and 1965 who paved the way for major changes in their social, political, and economic status within the United States. Including feminist Alice Dickerson Montemayor, San Antonio attorney Gus García, civil rights activist and scholar Ernesto Galarza, the subjects of these biographies include some of the most prominent idealists and actors of the time. Whether debating in a court of law, writing for a major newspaper, producing reports for governmental agencies, organizing workers, holding public office, or otherwise shaping space for the Mexican American identity in the United States, these subjects embody the core values and diversity of their generation. More than a chronicle of personalities who left their mark on Mexican American history, Leaders of the Mexican American Generation cements this community as a major player in the history of activism and civil rights in the United States. It is a rich collection of historical biographies that will enlighten and enliven our understanding of Mexican American history.
Traces the rise and career of the charismatic former president of Mexico, from his youth as the son of immigrants from the United States and Spain and his achievements as the youngest CEO in the history of Coca-Cola to his presidential efforts to reduce poverty, address corruption, and reform key social programs. 100,000 first printing.
Here is an authoritative reference work that makes biographies of prominent Mexican national politicians from the period 1884–1934 available in English. Like the author's biographical directory for the years 1935–2009, it draws on many years of research in Mexico and the United States and seeks not only to provide accurate biographical information about each entry but also, where possible and appropriate, to connect these politicians to more recent leadership generations. Thus, Mexican Political Biographies, 1884-1934 not only is a useful historical source but also provides additional information on the family backgrounds of many contemporary figures. The work includes those figures who have held specific posts at the national level or who have served as state governors. Each biographical entry contains the following information: date of birth, birthplace, education, elective political office, political party positions, appointive governmental posts at all levels, group activities, nongovernmental positions and professions, relatives, mentors and important friends, military experience, unusual career activities, and published biographical sources. Another unique feature of the directory is appendixes with complete lists of the names and dates of cabinet members, supreme court justices, senators, deputies, selected ambassadors, and party leaders.
A history of Mexican comic books, their readers, their producers, their critics, and their complex relations with the government and the Church that discusses cultural nationalism, popular taste, and social change.
The emergence of Latin American firebrands who champion the cause of the impoverished and rail against the evils of neoliberalism and Yankee imperialism--Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Néstor Kirchner in Argentina, Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico--has changed the landscape of the Americas in dramatic ways. This is the first biography to appear in English about one of these charismatic figures, who is known in his country by his adopted nickname of "Little Ray of Hope." The book follows López Obrador's life from his early years in the flyspecked state of Tabasco, his university studies, and the years that he lived among the impoverished Chontal Indians. Even as he showed an increasingly messianic élan to uplift the downtrodden, he confronted the muscular Institutional Revolutionary Party in running twice for governor of his home state and helping found the leftist-nationalist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). As the PRD's national president, he escalated his political and ideological warfare against his former president, Carlos Salinas, and other "conspirators" determined to link Mexico to the global economy at the expense of the poor. His strident advocacy of the "have-nots" lifted López Obrador to the mayorship of Mexico City, which he rechristened the "City of Hope." Its ubiquitous crime, traffic, pollution, and housing problems have made the capital a tomb for most politicians. Not for López Obrador. Through splashy public works, monthly stipends to senior citizens, huge marches, and a dawn-to-dusk work schedule, he converted the position into a trampoline to the presidency. Although he lost the official count by an eyelash, the hard-charging Tabascan cried fraud, took the oath as the nation's "legitimate president," and barnstormed the country, excoriating the "fascist" policies of President Felipe Calderón and preparing to redeem the destitute in the 2012 presidential contest. Grayson views López Obrador as quite different from populists like Chávez, Morales, and Kirchner and argues that he is a "secular messiah, who lives humbly, honors prophets, gathers apostles, declares himself indestructible, relishes playing the role of victim, and preaches a doctrine of salvation by returning to the values of the 1917 Constitution-- fairness for workers, Indians' rights, fervent nationalism, and anti-imperialism."
Based on six years of research, including interviews with leading Mexican entrepreneurial and political leaders and the assessment of hitherto unavailable materials, this work focuses on the complex political relationship between the Mexican state and leading businessmen from the 1920s to the present. Analyzing nearly 3000 biographies to compare Mexico's two leading competitors for political power, the author uses a humanistic approach to test a number of assumptions about the relationship between the business community and the state and provides new insights into the existence of a power elite, the exchange between economic and political leaders, the self-image of Mexican entrepreneurs, the position of family-controlled firms, and the influence of capitalists on the decision-making process. Camp also provides detailed information on the ownership of Mexico's top 200 firms, including names of stockholders, board members, and managers.
Maximino Avila Camacho and the One-Party State: The Taming of Caudillismo and Caciquismo in Post-Revolutionary Mexico is a political biography of General Maximino Avila Camacho (1891D1945), one of the most powerful regional politicians in Mexico from 1935 to 1945. He was a member of an officially sponsored party, known today as the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which claimed to represent the goals of the Mexican Revolution (1910D1921) and which managed to win most federal and regional elections from 1929 until its first presidential defeat in 2000. Maximino (as he is commonly known) became a powerful politician at the time when the official party effectively transformed the Mexican political system from one based on the personal power of regional strongmen and political bosses relying on clientelistic networks (popularly known as 'caudillos' and 'caciques') to a modern one based on a centralized civilian administration supported by institutions. The story of Maximino, the powerful cacique of the state of Puebla, demonstrates that the emergence of the one-party-dominated Mexican state did not destroy caudillos and caciques but simply controlled them. Specifically, it shows how the official party incorporated these leaders and their authoritarian practices into the state's political machinery. The result was 71 years of one-party political domination based on a political culture that emphasized patronage, favoritism, corruption, coercion and co-optation. By tracing Maximino's career, from revolutionary soldier to powerful political leader, we learn how and why the goals that had originally inspired the 'party of the revolution'—primarily democracy and social justice—were sacrificed in order to empower it.